…has taken a lot out of me. Things were busy, work was  exhausting, and, well, I ended up about as far along on You  Don’t Belong Here as I got on The Never-Ending Night. But  there’s plenty of time left in this workshop and plenty of  room for improvement.

This coming week…

…is lots of things. Fun things, like my three year  anniversary with my wife. So I have some days off. My goal is to have a  complete rough draft (at least) for my third story by  Sunday.

(And I still have no idea what I’m going to write for my fourth  week, but I’m sure I’ll think of something.)

The idea for the third week (without the ending this time):

Some whimsical writers claim they get in this ‘writerly trance’, where  they write thousands of words in one sitting because faeries  are their muses, who fly around and whisper ideas in their  ears.

What if a writer took it literally? And how can I tie this into the theme of death?

My idea this time is there’s this girl who wants to be a writer, like her best friend. She loves life and wants to share that love with others. But, frustrated that she can’t come up with ideas  very well, and that she can’t write as well as her friend from the start, she follows instructions in a grimoire and summons a fae. At first  it works wonderfully, except all her stories are turning out  dark and evil, which is quite the opposite of her personality, so her friends and family start to worry.

“You can’t force them to come. You just have to keep writing. Then, one day, they gather on their own.”

What she didn’t realize was she summoned a dark fae. When she finds out, she captures it. (Or maybe the fae wants to leave but she won’t let it, then she finds out it’s a dark fae?)

Her friend warns her that the dark fae strike a bargain for being summoned; They take away what you fear most. But it will be worse threefold for imprisoning her. And she worries it will be far worse when she prolongs the imprisonment for years beyond that. What she fears the most is death, so she refuses to let it free.

“There is a difference between fae and humans, this you must  understand,” said Almina. “It is something we have in common  with the animals that you do not– When humans get caught in  a trap, they harbor hatred and plot revenge, where animals simply chew off their legs and move on.”

So, that’s the basic setup. You’ll have to imagine what the  ending is yourself (or ask me if you can read it someday!) :)